A Face To Call Home
by Eich
Summary: Cosima always thought that home was something you should build, not someone you could find.


_A/N: Vaguely based on this: .vu/post/67302662212/nie-o-haus-never-o-home and this: post/66229109351. I don't know where I read that, in this screencap it seems like Cosima is thinking "I could come home if home was you"**.**_

**A Face To Call Home**

You never had a home. Not a real one like the ones in the movies or the commercials on TV. Everything you own fits into a backpack. It has to be that way. You have to be able to vanish at any moment without looking back, without showing that you are on the run. You have to be able to make a quick escape, going from your temporary job straight to the train satation or to the highway - whichever is closer, whichever you find safer.

It wasn't always that way, though, at a point in your life you had a roof over your head and a bed to sleep on. Still, it wasn't home. It never felt like it. But it never bothered you anyway. There was an entire world lying at your feet, waiting to be discovered, yearning to be studied, and so, you focused yourself in understanding as much as you could about as many things as you could.

You burried yourself behind books during the day and worked at a coffee shop close to the campus on the evening. You were living your life like any other regular girl.

Until the day you weren't.

Until the day you stood at the door of your room staring at another version of yourself.

A clone.

A copy of who knows who.

An experiment of some kind.

A human "lab rat"

Just like you.

Just like many others.

She was a about four or five years older than you. A cop. Beth. Who had bursted into your life to warn you about the people who had created you. The people who had now decided that it was time to gather all the "subjects" under their control. At the time she couldn't explaine to you why they had reached such decision. After all, you had lived your own lives up until that point.

Now, though, you had started to have a glimpse of their reasons.

A red image that hung heavy on your chest with each passing day, leaving casual imprints on paper tissues that were kept hidden on the bottom of your pockets.

You left only a few hours after she had closed the doos behind her backs, everything abandoned. All your goals and all your dreams had remained locked on the small apartment you had lived in.

You couldn't afford to carry them with you.

It was hard for a few weeks, when you were still grieving for all that you would never have, for all that you would never become, for the singularity you were stolen of.

And then, one night, while you were lying in the grass of a nameless park looking up to the stars, it hit you.

Belonging to them had set you free. DYAD owned you, but they didn't had you. They had taken your life away, and, by doing so, they had also given you the world.

That night you had stayed up, making a list of things you wished to see, things you wished to do, things that you wished to live. And when the sun had come to find you, you had a huge grin on your face and the feeling you could rule the universe pumping through your veins.

From that moment on, your life had become a succesion of days and moments, of places and people, of tastes and smells, of feelings and touches, tears and smiles. Time wasn't mesured by the clock, because you only had to be careful not to loose the next train. Money was provided by the temporary jobs you took on, but only the enough for you to eat and to get you to the next place.

And, truth be told, you absolutely loved it. You wouldn't change it for anything in the world. Or so you thought, until only hours ago.

Until you had entered a flea market in a street in Paris to, literally, bump into the most beautiful and precious human being ever created.

How that had lead to a coffee invitation or how she had turned into your personal tourist guide, it wasn't quite clear. Just as it wasn't clear who had been the one to initiate that kiss, or the one who had sujested they had seen enough for a day. Of the city, at least.

The real exploration had begun the moment when she had been pulled into the french's apartment by their joined hands.

Every inch of skin discovered and rediscovered by wandering hands. By insatiable lips that trailed warm paths of kisses through out bodies covered in sweat, coaxing moans and cries and gasps and curses to be shouted and whispered into the darkness, until exaustion had finally come to claim them.

Or at least one of them.

Slowly tracing your fingers up to the arm lying across you bare stomach, you smile when she moves even closer to you. You're both lying on her bed in a delicious mess of limbs and sheets, while you take your time to memorize every single detail about this moment. The bedroom is iluminated only by the the street lamps that paints everything with a soft yellow glow, making her hair seem like pure gold against the pale tone of her forehead. You raise your hand brushing a strand away from her face and can feel the sweet aroma of her shampoo mixed with the smell of wooden floors and old paper from her book shelves, dusted with the smoke of her cigarettes. The air is still heavy, damp with sweat and the distant echo of moans and soft whispered words you couldn't fully understand, but that, even so, had carved their way into your mind.

Her skin is burning hot against yours. Her breathing cools the moisture that still clings to your body, sending shivers down your spine and fuelling the heat at the pit of your stomach. You can feel the soft rise and fall of her chest pressing your sides. Her legs intertwined with yours, the gentle brush of her eyelashes against your neck, one of her hands clasped between your left one, while the other is spread wide over your hipbone.

She is clinging to you even as she sleeps.

And you wish you could stay here forever. Deep down, you feel like you could belong in here. In the space between her body and her bed, filling all the dips and curves of her, as she molds to fit your molecules and atoms.

You had had one night stands before.

You had had massive crushes that leasted for months, weeks, days, hours.

You had fallen in love with the idea of someone.

You had fallen in love with someone's mind.

You had fallen in love with someone's body.

You had fallen in love with someone's smile. With their eyes. With their laugh.

You always wore your heart out on a sleeve and you had been rewarded for it, with happinnes and with pain, but, either way, you had never regretted it. You had never tried to change.

But never, in your 23 years in this world you had felt something like this.

You hadn't fallen in love with this girl. It seemed as if you had loved her all along. Every single thing about her. And in the second you laid your eyes over her, it all came crashing down on you with the force of a thousand waves dragging you back to the shore.

You though you had been happy before but you had been wrong. Oh, so wrong.

This was what it meant to be alive. This was happiness in it's rawest form. In it's purest form.

If death come for you now, you would gladly jump into it's arms knowing that you had reached the highest point of your existence. You had found bliss, nirvana, heaven.

You had found her.

You had found home.

Slowly, as not to disturb her tired form, you turn around to face her and can't help the grin that spreads over your features when look at her. Truly look at her. Your heart is bursting with so many feelings and so many emotions you're sure your brain has gone into overload and it's now releasing all kinds of chemical substances on your bloodstream.

But then again, you're not entirely sure this is all about chemical reactions.

A tear makes it's way down your cheekbone and only then you realize you have been crying.

You don't bother to wipe the tear away, choosing to rest your forehead against hers, instead, closing your eyes and breathing her in to soak your lungs with the scent of her. Imprinting the warth of her skin on your body.

Seconds turn into minutes and before long the bedroom gets brighter. You can see the sun coming up from behind your closed eyelids bringing you another day.

Throwing you back into reality. Into your reality.

And suddenly you do wish that death would come rushing for you.

You wish it could find you before the sun, because, that way, you wouldn't have to leave her.

But you can almost hear it laughing at your silent pleas. Death will come for you. You can feel it getting closer day by day, you can sense it closing it's fits around your chest, sending you red stained messages, filling your mouth with the metalic taste of it's arrival.

And, yet, it will not rush it's pace. It will not spare you from the cracks you will have to carry after breaking yourself away from her.

You pray to the universe she can somehow forgive you, as you keep repeating for yourself that it's for the best.

It's all too much. You have no right to drag her into this twisted world of yours.

She deserves more than a backpack and a few months.

You have the world lying at your feet and you wish more than anything that you could give it to her. That you could share it with her. You wish more than anything that you could share this small apartment with her. That you never had to leave again because, as much as you love the world, you would gladly give it up for her.

But you can't.

You carry another dozen of girls along with you (how many of us are there?) and the eyes that you try to hide from, threaten to fall over your head at any moment while death keeps pouring all it's weight on your chest.

It's all too heavy and you don't want her to bend under its weight.

So you swallow your tears for later and you, carefully, pull away from her embrace, from the safe shelter of her arms, and start to get dress looking outside her window.

You can't bring yourself to look at her. Not yet. Not when you're still tingling from the places your bodies were touching.

When you're finally ready you take your polaroid camera from the bottom of your backpack and snap a picture of her.

You hope beyond hope to have gathered enough memories in the last 24h to get you through the rest of your life, but, even so, you need something solid to hold on to.

You need to know it wasn't a dream.

Hovering over her sleeping form, you drop one last kiss on her lips before grabbing her plain white shirt from it's place at the headboard.

You hold the soft fabric, feeling it, cold and smooth, through your fingers. You don't dare to test your theory just yet, but you know it smells like her, and so, without any shame whatsoever you place it among your things with the photo.

You start to pick up your bracelets and ringrs from her nightstand, hesitating once you reach for your necklace. A smile find it's way to your face as you recall the way she had tugged at it last night, joking about how could a person as small as you could use so many "things" at once.

You take it from the wood surface only to drop it over the pillow beside her.

Everything you own fits into a backpack. For everything you take, there has to be something left behind.

A piece of you that you know you will never recover, and you wouldn't have it any other way.

With one final glimpse at her, you slide the straps over your shoulders and heads for the door. Your hand is only inches away from the doorknob when the soft rustle of sheets catches your attention, she says your name in a sleepy whisper.

You close your eyes when the sweet sound hits you.

It's a call from home_._


End file.
